


Devouring Polaris

by lshtar



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-14
Updated: 2015-11-14
Packaged: 2018-05-01 12:40:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,094
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5206235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lshtar/pseuds/lshtar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Elia dies never knowing if it was because Ashara didn't hear her or because she didn't care.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Devouring Polaris

 

 

 

> _**i. my alone feels so good, I'll only have you if you're sweeter than my solitude.** _

The curtains are heavy with dust and are oozing Targaryen pride. From Visenya clashing with indistinguishable soldiers on the Field of Fire to Jaehaerys I and Alysanne pouring over texts and scrolls by candlelight. The whole castle is smeared black and red. Ashara is just glad that the drapes at least have the sense to be soft silk.

Fingers dancing along the history of the Seven Kingdoms, violet eyes glance at the garden below. The Dornish princess is wandering amongst the fire lilies, all ochre eyes, beryl lace and hesitant smiles. The girl is far from remarkable.

She's plucking flowers from the ground, and it’s almost comical how she keeps uprooting more than just Targaryen tradition. _'Daring, but far from special,'_ Ashara reckons as she pivots on her heel, turning away from the sight.

A gentle voice from beneath utters, _"it was nice to see you, Lady Ashara."_

Her eyelid twitches, but Ashara strides away without a word. She hasn't a clue what that girl is talking about, but she won't deny that Princess Elia is refreshingly different.

* * *

 

 

 

>   
>  **_ii. you are terrifying and strange and beautiful, someone not everyone knows how to love._ **

She does not miss the girl, truth be told they are not even acquaintances. The conversation with the other ladies of the court is just repulsively dry, that is the only reason why Ashara is in the Kingswood. She is not looking for Elia, and if her eyes are darting all around her, it is only because she has never actually entered the enclosure before.

 _"Well met, Lady Ashara. I did not know you were here,"_ the future Queen did not even have the grace to hide the teasing tone from her voice.

 _"Princess,"_ she greeted with a bow. _"I had not thought to be here."_

Dabbing at her lips with a lace napkin, Elia pursed her lips. _"Let us not behave falsely, I know you think me foolish."_

Ashara by all accounts did not gasp, but her lips did part in surprise and words attempted to crawl out in explanation. _"...f-f-foolish, your--my princess, I never. I don--"_

 _"Breath, I am not ang--"_ Elia's form shuddered and shook with painful coughs. The napkin reappeared, as her hacking slowed.

Her olive skin bloodless, her mouth a ruby ruin, but clearing her throat, Elia ploughed on. _"I am not angry with you, I am aware that I am far from the traditional Targaryen bride."_

 _"Yours is not the first Targaryen-Martell match."_ A wry look crossed Elia's face, and her eyes darkened.

 _"Your words are harder to grasp than grains of sand--never precise, just abstract comments that leave your opinion unspoken."_ Ashara did not answer, and the Princess seemed to take that as agreeing.

_"You think me frail, and pitiable? You think that I'll be the tragic backdrop, and you'll be illuminated? That I will be the night sky, and you, the coveted shooting star?"_

The Princess shook her head sternly, **_"I am the sun, and I will swallow you whole."_**

Adorned in her gown of onyx and sapphires, eyes blazing and hair puffing out in the wind, Elia looked like the Summer Sea. But it was autumn, and the sun and Elia had left the garden.

* * *

****

 

 

 

> **_iii. maybe home is somewhere I’m going and never have been before._ **

  
Ashara has seen Elia, it is inconceivable to attempt to avoid her, but she never catches all of the Princess. She will see her long starless locks rounding the corner ahead of her. Catch a glimpse of her flashing ecru eyes across the throne room. Hear her laughter down the hall when Rhaegar and Elia take turns feeling her pregnant belly. Ashara doesn't miss her though, stars are too brief to miss anything.

They don't speak for three moons, Dornish women are stubborn if nothing else, and they both perpetrate the gap between them. They aren't deaf though, only distant. It is just past dusk when Ashara is torn from her thoughts by a gut wrenching wail, and the sounds of chaos. Leaping to her feet, and rushing towards the sound all she can do is think, _'Elia.'_

Tearing into the royal apartments, Ashara immediately can see the cause of distress. _'The baby is early, Elia isn't due for another two moons.'_

Swallowing the urge to vomit, Ashara grabs for Elia and a rag. Dabbing at her Princess' forehead gently, _"when was the last time you bathed, my Princess? You are emitting quite the odour."_

_" I do believe it was around the time that you last provided me with the respect deserving a Targaryen Princess."_

_"Never then?"_

Elia gave a smile, and even though her hair was a mess, it was possibly the most dazzling sight Ashara had ever seen.

* * *

 

 

 

> **_iv. you can't make homes out of human beings, someone should have already told you that._ **

  
Ashara has had twenty-four name days, and she is certain that the sun is going out. Elia has been abed three weeks since Rhaenys' birth, and she can still barely manage to eat without aid. However, the severity of the situation seemed to force the two closer together. Braiding Elia's hair every morning as they watch the sunrise, helping her eat, playing with Rhaenys within view of her Princess--it's gotten hard for Ashara to see where the star ends and the sun begins.

Rhaegar visits often too, playing his harp quietly for Elia and telling her the latest news of the Realm. They aren't in-love though, for all their mutual fondness--they're just too dissimilar.

They spend the day in the sunlight on a warm autumn day after Elia has to recovered enough to be dressed and wheeled into the garden. The day is filled with cyvasse, blood-oranges and cooing at Rhaenys. It is quite possibly the best day either of them have had in years.

Ashara doesn't notice until after when she is walking to her apartments, that her name day has come and gone without knowledge, not even her own. She doesn't know how to feel about that. Ashara has had twenty-five name days, and she thinks she may be in love.

_Ashara has had twenty-five name days, and this is only the third time she has ever been wrong._

* * *

 

 

 

> _**v. I let you leave, I need someone who knows how to stay.** _

A crisp breeze blows in off the waves, Elia's hair is tangled gently in Ashara's fingers. Sporadic breaths exit her mouth, sending the sleeve of Ashara's dressing gown upwards then back down. Their legs are entangled and the evening is calming. Leaning down to give sweep the curtain of stray hair from Elia's face, Ashara smiled.

Ghosting her fingertips over a sharp cheekbone, she was surprised to see familiar eyes flutter open droopily and a lazy hand reaching up to clasp her own. Threading their fingers together, she stared into Elia's eyes. Sometimes she felt like she could see history in them, villages being burned, countries being liberated, the creation of the sun, the storm that would sweep all men from the land, in Elia she saw the birth and death of every story she'd ever want to hear. It was overwhelming.

Elia appeared to be confused, but whatever she was seeing in Ashara's gaze seemed to calm her. Using their joined fingers as leverage, Elia pulled Ashara on top of her. Smoothing the skin by her lips before closing the space between them until separation was a distant memory. Her mouth was a song Ashara had sang so many times that she had it memorized, but this time the usual faint taste of iron was more pronounced. Darting back she broke the contact to catch her breath and thoughts.

_"What is that?"_

A bleary stare was her answer, _"hmm?"_

 _"Tha--that taste! It's like the aftertaste of mollusks or cocoa,"_ Ashara hesitated, _"...or..?"_

 _"...or?"_ Elia implored.

_"...it tastes like blood, Elia."_

_"Does it?"_ she asked, rolling over and burying her nose in Ashara's ribcage.

Fingers stroking Elia's arm, tracing promises over her veins. _"You know it does, you've know for quite a while, haven't you?"_

 _"You give me too much credit,"_ Elia hummed, looking up at her from under her eyelashes.

Lips trembling, and shoulders that threatened to give way, _"are you dying, Elia?"_

_"...aren't we all?"_

They didn't move, but that was the last time they kissed, the Harrenhal Tournament was two weeks later.

* * *

 

 

 

> _**vi. I glow the way unwanted things do, a neon sign that reads; come, I still taste like someone else’s mouth.** _

  
_'She's carrying his spawn again,'_ Ashara drank three cups of strongwine from the Arbor. They were not related events. The Dragon Prince and her Elia were perched serenely with the Whent family at the head of the table, speaking to each other lowly. Ashara was seven feet deep in her cups and had her gaze on a smug Northman across the hall.

Long after dark, lips that were as different as possible from Elia's, crashed against hers, and Ashara tried not to cringe. His fingers were holding her to him by her hair and waist, but she refused to balk. Stars were short-lived, they couldn't afford to love dying things.

Calloused hands hiked up her gown and held her against the wall, _'I will enjoy this, I will.'_

Surging up and in, scraping her back against the stone wall, Ashara did not cringe. Head slamming on the hard surface when he darted in too harshly for a bruising kiss, _'I will enjoy this, I will.'_

Ashara does not think of how she never had to force herself to sleep with Elia, but when she falls asleep that night, mouth tasting of iron--Ashara sleeps easier than she has in the past two weeks.

There will be songs years later of a man at Harrenhal, who she fell in love with, who dishonoured her, who wedded and bedded her, who did so many things, none of the songs will be right.

_Brandon Stark did what he did, and none of it was out of love._

* * *

 

 

 

> _**vii. you lick your lips, you taste like years of being alone.** _

  
The weeks that follow are sickening, Rhaegar was many things, but Ashara never hated him. Not until he brought the whole Realm down around them all, damn fool. He races off like he is the knight in some stupid song, off to run away with his she-bitch. Elia as always survives. Enduring Aerys, the humiliation and her pregnancy with a grace that Ashara doesn't understand.

It isn't until Brandon comes to court that Elia seeks her out. Ashara expects apologies, love-making, escaping together. Ashara expects a thousand things, but what Elia says never crossed her mind. _"It's time for you to go home, my little star."_

As she boards the ship bound to Sunspear, Ashara and Elia share one last glance. No declarations of love occur, no reconciliation, just _"it was nice to have met you, Lady Ashara."_

Ashara remembers the girl in the garden all those years ago, gown of beryl blue, laughing ochre eyes and shy smiles--she had looked like the Dornish sun rising over the Summer Sea. She'd looked like home.

Ashara remembers thinking the Princess tragic, foolish, unremarkable, she remembers being wrong. Ashara remembers being in love with Elia of Dorne, but just as she did all those years ago, Ashara walks away without a word.

_Elia dies never knowing if it was because Ashara didn't hear her or because she didn't care._

* * *

 

 

 

> _**vii. loving you was like going to war; I never came back the same.** _

Returning to Dorne feels odd. Ashara hasn't been home in two summers and Sunspear is colder than she recalled. As the vessel docked softly in the bay, she gazed out at the ocean. Sun barely peaking over the horizon, the Summer Sea may be the most radiant thing she has seen. 

Ashara has had twenty eight name days, and she doesn't know how many times she's been wrong. 

The caravan from Sunspear to Starfall is much slower than she remembers, but Ashara maintains her composure as best she can. Hips aching and a lingering pain in her abdomen, the ride is miserable. 

When she was last making this trek, crossing quarries and spice peddlers along the sandy mountain passes, Ashara had been thirteen years young. Bright eyed and heavy hopes for tragic loves like she'd heard songs of, the girl had set off to live a life that would leave a trail of broken hearts and a string of lovers in each of the Realms. _Instead she returns with Elia's heart crushed beneath her fingers._

Ashara never learns if stars are too brief to truly love anything--all she knows is she likes the way the sun shines. Elia is constant, she can be found in anything. Even here in a loveless castle in Dorne, all she needs to do is glance up and see the sun above. _Ashara looks at the dirt below, feels something move inside and says nothing._

_Four days later when she goes into labour, she'll wonder if it was because the baby moved or because there wasn't any flowers for a quiet princess to tear out._

* * *

 

 

 

> _**ix. the whole time your name flat against the roof of my mouth.**  
>  _

_**  
**_ The world is a bleary shade of rust, blurring into black at the edges. Ashara is sweating and her hands are just barely moving. She tells herself they are not searching for something to hold. A baby, a tanned hand-- _even if she wanted to hold either of those wretched things, she couldn't._

The child is in a crib several feet away, cloudy brown eyes and a curtain of pale chocolate hairs. Wheezing quietly and whimpering, Ashara drags herself from bed. The girl-child probably won't survive the night, too small and underdeveloped to hope for a future for her.

Looking down into a face that seems familiar, all Ashara can think is how prettier Elia's eyes are. She runs a hand through the girl's cap of hair and vows to love her tomorrow. _'I will enjoy this, I will. '_

 _The sun rises and she doesn't love her daughter._ But when the wet nurse comes to feed her, Ashara feels a tiny shiver of worry when the child coughs. _Worry or a memory of a bloody napkin in a godswood a lifetime ago, she doesn't try to discern._

Alone in the room with her daughter, Ashara tries to pretend she is playing with Rhaenys--that was always effortless. She carries her to the chair by the window and begins to haphazardly move the dolls in a way that Rhaenys had liked. Her daughter is not amused. Ashara debates trying different tactics with different toys, she chooses to tell the babe a story instead. 

She speaks of a foolhardy girl who fell in love with a brook that was on the edge of a mountain range. When the storms came it had flowed strong, breathing life back into the girl. The storms brought the wind though and they pushed rocks from mountain sides that blocked the stream. The girl wept for seasons in hopes that the river would return to her, but all the tears did was form the Rhoyne, which some say the girl drowned in.

Ashara is almost twenty nine now, and she knows stars can't love dying things, that doesn't stop her from telling her brother that the girl's name is _'Allyria,'_ and giving him a letter to give to her if she makes it to girlhood. 

 _She knows she doesn't love her daughter, but by the Seven, Ashara tried her best._ She goes to sleep that night thinking of a small manse by the Rhoyne, with a soft bed with silk sheets, Elia and if she catches a glimpse of two girls laying under the veranda with olive skin and familiar eyes-- _Ashara has been wrong more times than right these past five years._  

Ashara is almost twenty nine, and she wakes most mornings with Elia's name on her lips and imagines a house by the Torentine in view of the sun with the echoes of children wafting in from outside.

_Ashara is definitely twenty nine when Elia dies._

* * *

 

 

 

> _  
> _ **x. I learn urgently the architecture of loss, then find you again.**

 

Elia isn't dead, Ashara is in the garden picking flowers and she can distinctly feel the sun's caress on her arms. Elia isn't dead. 

The only thing that Ashara can think of is how it may not have been the Rhoyne that was born from loveblood, but perhaps the world itself--or at least the Torentine. 

She weaves crowns out of lilies that are most assuredly not like the ones Rhaenys makes, she crafts more circlets than she can count, entangling them, tangling a tapestry of crowns and carefully places them on the sandy shore of the bay. The tide is quicker than her fingers, but Ashara crosses the sky in seconds. She can make them quicker, she can. She will. 

_More lilies than name days, Ashara doesn't know anything anymore._

The waves steal the crowns slowly one wave at a time, dragging the flower chain out to sea inches at a time. Ashara stands in the sand and does not think of Elia, and when the last link in the chain is torn from the shore--she does not flinch. 

If the links are in line with the sunset, Ashara does not notice that it looks like she leashed the sun. They were in love, she recognizes that now, but the sun has slipped from reach. 

_Ashara is months shy of thirty one and she wishes she had known how to love better._

Months short of thirty one, Ashara has learned that wishes rarely come true. When she slips into the sea, one cold morning and slips into the embrace of a woman with laughing eyes, _Ashara gives up on ever being right about anything._  

 

* * *

 

 

 

> **+. afterword for the devoured.**

_Elia has never been gorgeous, body too frail, soul too brittle, heart too broken, but all Ashara can think when she opens her eyes is, doesn't she wear the world well?_

_All Elia can think of is a story of a girl who fell in love alone, and the girl who loved her back too late, if she murmurs about stories not ending at death, Ashara just grasps her cheeks and steals her breath._

_They taste like a lifetime of being in love._


End file.
